O happy day that fixed my choice.
—Doddridge.
O how happy are they who the Saviour obey.
—Charles Wesley.
These were voices as sure to be heard in converts' meetings as the leader's prayer or text, the former sung inevitably to Rimbault's tune, “Happy Day,” and the latter to a “Western Melody” quite as closely akin to Wesley's words.
Edward Francis Rimbault, born at Soho, Eng., June 13, 1816, was at sixteen years of age organist at the Soho Swiss Church, and became a skilled though not a prolific composer. He once received—and declined—the offer of an appointment as professor of music in Harvard College. Died of a lingering illness Sept, 26, 1876.
“COME, HOLY SPIRIT, HEAVENLY DOVE.”
—Watts.
This was the immortal song-litany that fitted almost anywhere into every service. The Presbyterians and Congregationalists sang it in Tansur's “St. Martins,” the Baptists in William Jones' “Stephens” and the Methodists in Maxim's “Turner” (which had the most music), but the hymn went about as well with one as with another.
The Rev. William Jones (1726–1800) an English rector, and Abraham Maxim of Buckfield, Me., (1773–1829) contributed quite a liberal share of the “continental” tunes popular in the latter part of the 18th century. Maxim was eccentric, but the tradition that an unfortunate affair of the heart once drove him into the woods to make away with himself, but a bird on the roof of a logger's hut, 329 / 283 making plaintive sounds, interrupted him, and he sat down and wrote the tune “Hallowell,” on a strip of white birch bark, is more likely legendary. The following words, said to have inspired his minor tune, are still set to it in the old collections: